Huntingtons

High School Rock (Tooth & Nail)
by Scott Hefflon

Huntingtons recorded at Sonic Iguana with Mass Giorgini, there’s no “The” in front of their name, all the band members last names are listed as “Huntington,” and they called their album High School Rock – can you guess who they sound like? You guessed it, like (the) Ramones, (the) Riverdales, and many a fine Ramonesy band. If you didn’t guess that, sorry, there’s no review of Counting Crows on this or any page of this magazine. Please buy this magazine anyway on your way out of the store, weeping at how much you have yet to learn. Anyway, while Huntingtons have all the practically required-by-law “whoa-ut-oh-oh-oh-oh”s (more like The Queers, but let’s not quibble) and “three or four chords played in one order during the verse, a different order for the chorus, toss in key change for the bridge,” they also use rich harmonies, more like the new school of Ramones-based punk. And damn if they ain’t fast when they wanna be. On both accounts, think (the) Teen Idols (another Sonic Iguana baby, ditto with The Queers, coincidentally) without that yummy bassist’s female voice added into the mix. Clocking in at 32 minutes, you don’t have to be very good at math to figure out how long the 16 songs are probably going to be. … Two minutes, in case you were still working on it as of this sentence. Lyrics range from silly to spiteful to lustful to lonesome to day-in-the-life, and song titles include such future classics as “Jeannie Hates the Ramones,” “Stinky’s All Grown Up,” “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?,” “Jackie is an Atheist,” and “Avi is a Vampire.”
(PO Box 12698 Seattle, WA 98111)